Morning spilled over the Academy in bands of pale gold. Mist lifted from the training greens in thin veils; bells tolled once, twice—measured, inevitable. Ernest dressed in the dark uniform of Class C, the Aldery sigil stitched in silver at his collar like a quiet threat. His gloves creaked faintly as he flexed his fingers. The blade his father had given him rested against the wardrobe: a promise in steel.
In the corridor, students flowed toward the west stair in tidy streams that kept breaking at the edges—laughter a little too loud, murmurs a little too sharp. A servant bowed as Ernest passed, then couldn't help glancing up, as if daring a second look might teach them what the first had not.
"Class C—lecture hall three," an instructor called, her voice dry as chalk.
The hall was a fan of stone benches circling a lowered dais. Light fell from a narrow oculus, turning dust to gold. Ernest took a seat in the second row. It placed him within reach of the dais but not at its throat—close enough to see hands and hear breath, far enough to be overlooked by those who only saw the front-most prey.
Celina Gold sat across the curve, three benches away. Light found her hair and admitted it gladly; shadow found her face and could not settle there. She did not look around to see who stared. That was the trick, Ernest noted—never offer the attention they want, and they devour themselves trying to chase it.
The instructor, a thin man with ink-stained fingers and a ring set with a dull blue stone, stepped to the dais and pushed his spectacles higher. "I am Magister Halvern. Magical substrate, elementary control. If you are here, you are not blank slates; your tutors have taught you to hold a candle without burning your house down."
A soft ripple of amusement.
Halvern's gaze sharpened. "We will see."
He lifted his hand. Runes unfolded like a slow breath, light stitching into a simple array. "Mana is not river alone; it is pressure and path. Feel it pool, divide, thin. You—" His finger cut through the air and landed, unerring, on Ernest. "Aldery. Demonstrate basic circulation. Spine, heart, palms. Control your draw. No flares."
Whispers smudged the air.
Ernest rose without hurry. Every step measured. He reached the dais and faced the hall. The oculus made a pale circle around him. He felt the room lean, the way rooms do when prey smells of fear. He let his breath settle low.
They will measure breath and call it mastery, he thought. Let them measure.
He pulled.
Mana answered. It always answered—like an ocean humbling itself to become rain. In another life—another boy—power might have surged up and thrown him back. Ernest gathered it with the same economy he used for words: not a drop wasted. A cool tide pressed along his spine, slipped beneath his ribs, spread into his chest and down his arms. He turned his hands palm-up. Light pooled in each like water cupped and unspilled.
A low murmur. The rival from the courtyard—signet ring, soft vanity—sat three rows up, jaw set like he had remembered to clench too late. His friends leaned in, trying to decide if this was skill they could mock or skill they must ignore.
"Enough," Halvern said.
Ernest did not release. He thinned the flow, narrowed it to a wire; let the lights in his palms dim to a ghost-thickness, then vanish. He stepped back, inclining his head without the smallest flourish.
Halvern's mouth made a line. "Acceptable."
Ernest returned to his seat. Celina did not look at him, but he felt the tiniest shift in the air—as if the room had just remembered it held two predators, not one.
Students took turns: some flushed with effort and shook their hands as if the tingling bit, some grinned too widely when any light answered them, some failed and laughed before anyone else could. The signet boy's turn came. He threw too much at the first pull; light flared up his wrists like a pair of cheap torches. The array Halvern had drawn shivered in protest.
"Control," the magister snapped. "Not display."
The boy's cheeks spotted with color; he yanked the flow closed so hard the light coughed out. His eyes cut sideways toward Ernest. The look said: You did this to me. The truth was simpler: You did this to yourself. I merely let you watch me do it correctly.
"Seatwork," Halvern intoned. "Write the rune for aperture narrowing, then copy the array ten times without variance. We find your hands before we let them touch anything worth burning."
Quills scraped. Paper sighed. Ernest's hand moved with mechanical grace. He copied the shape precisely four times, then let the fifth be a breath off—a diagonal half a hair shallow, a curve a sigh too fat. He corrected it with the deliberate care of a child who wants to be seen trying.
The quiet around Celina was different than the quiet around him. His air said danger recognized and circled; hers said danger misnamed and avoided. When she reached for mana, the shape of it changed the light—green shot through with white, bright enough at the edges to make the oculus seam glare. She reined it in at once, and with that act Ernest saw the bars of her cage.
The curse bites when she pulls too deep.
He wrote it on the inside of his skull.
When the bell freed them, the hall broke into knots. Names rose and fell, houses tested one another the way dogs nosed and pressed. The signet boy breathed in Ernest's path like a man stepping into wind.
"You think being quiet makes you dangerous," he said, low. "It makes you small."
Ernest looked at him. Not down. Not up. Through.
The boy swallowed. His friends pulled up like hounds that had found the end of a chain and didn't remember being leashed. Silence made an outline around them. Ernest's words slipped into it, brass cold.
"Noise is small," he said.
A breath. A heartbeat. He walked on.
Sword forms followed in the outer yard: clean lines, sun and sweat. An instructor with forearms like braided cable moved through the rows, tapping shoulders, correcting feet. "Blade up, not chin. Stance first. Then cut. Again."
Ernest's body was a cage he intended to decorate with knives. He matched the forms. The blade's weight tugged his shoulder the way truth tugs lies. The rival heir—there would be a name soon, but names were decorations and Ernest preferred bones—slashed for show and missed lines for substance. He laughed when others stumbled; he did not notice when he lost breath too soon.
"Pair drill," the instructor called. "Controlled. Control is victory."
Pairs formed like oil on water. No one reached for Ernest. A boy with callused hands and good boots ended up across from him anyway—the kind of lesser noble sons the Academy tended to polish into useful edges. His name, offered in a rush, was Mikel.
They saluted. They moved. Mikel's blade came true and modest; Ernest's met it with minimal travel, less noise than a breath. The exercise required touch and retreat, touch and retreat; too many turned it into a contest by accident. Ernest did not. The instructor's attention gave him one brief, approving glance, then moved on like a hawk deciding not to stoop yet.
Across the yard, the signet boy—flushed, overly eager—turned a touch into a lunge; his partner stumbled. The instructor's staff cracked the ground beside them. "Control," he said again, and this time it sounded like: Or leave.
The afternoon lecture was history. Names stacked like stones; dates marched; treaties smiled with too many teeth. Ernest swallowed the lessons the way he swallowed blood in the forest—without comment, because comment was waste. He wrote what they wanted and then what he wanted: three lines at the bottom of the page in a child's messy hand that would mean nothing if anyone else read them.
Treaties are cages with doors the maker keeps the key to.
Rivals collect themselves. I will let them.
Celina's pull = bright edge; curse snaps at threshold.
By the time shadows reached long fingers across the green again, Class C knew its own shape. They were not pack yet. Packs required teeth pointed outward in the same direction. This, now, was a ring of wolves showing one another their mouths.
Ernest returned to the dormitory when the bell consigned the day to study and the halls to quieter breath. The corridor outside his door held a small knot of second-years, heads together.
"…in Class C, can you imagine—both Aldery and Gold—"
"Priests will buzz like flies."
"And that one—what is his expression? Has anyone ever seen him laugh?"
"Don't be cruel. He's—"
"Cruel? Look at him and tell me you don't feel like prey."
Their words washed past him and left him dry. In his room, lamplight warmed the edges of the desk, the bed, the blade against the wardrobe. He shut the door. Quiet became a soft fur over stone.
He set out his schedule. He slit the seam in the trunk and took out his notebook. The child's hand came easily; the mind behind it did not need prompting.
Magister Halvern uses pressure-path model. Useful language for those without Voice. Keep for cover.
Rival heir (signet) = undisciplined draw; reactive. Will force a public test. Do not accept on his terms.
Mikel—useful. Honest blade. Keep near without warmth.
Celina—curse restraint visible. Composure equal to mine. Observe thresholds. If I pull for her, does the leash snap at me or the hand that forged it?
He let the quill hang above that last line until a bead of ink fattened, then set it down before it fell. A priest's shadow moved along the courtyard below like a hand under paper. Ernest felt the Veil settle—not because he called it, but because it knew when to descend.
He crossed to the window. Moonrise brushed the stones with silver. The dueling circle glowed faintly; he could almost hear the future laid over it like a translucent skin—names called, cheers, the copper tang of humiliation in the mouth of someone who had mistaken noise for teeth.
Across the green, in another window, light flared and narrowed—green shot with white. It dimmed quickly, as if a hand had pressed against a wound and held there until the blood respected the press. The light died. The room went dark. Ernest's reflection in the glass smiled without its eyes.
"The forest bent," he told the quiet. "The nobles bowed behind masks."
He watched his breath fog the window and vanish.
"This class of wolves will learn."
He turned from the glass, set his hand against the cool stone, and closed his eyes for a heartbeat as if to listen to the building breathe.
"I am the Voice that commands," Ernest whispered, so softly only the Veil could hear him, "even in silence."